


Everything Means Everything

by ViaLethe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Dark, F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, Arya's just trying to hold onto the one person she has left, no matter what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Means Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _Game of Thrones, Jon/aged up!Arya, modern!au, apocalypse._ Arya is meant to be about 17; mostly it's a _Game of Thrones_ AU, with a few elements from later books.

Before, Arya always wanted life to be like a movie – not a silly romantic comedy like Sansa loves (Sansa, who's safest of all of them, trapped underground with the people who caused this outbreak), but one with lots of fighting and adventures and things blowing up.

But as she watches Jon struggle with the creature that had once been her mother, now a mindless zombie who hates them both equally, somehow life as a movie doesn't seem so appealing anymore.

Their father is dead already, and Robb with him. The younger boys are lost, scattered in the darkness. She supposes they were too small to run fast enough; still, she makes herself check each child they pass, lying facedown in the dirt.

So Jon is all she has now, Jon who always resembled her most, who always understood her best.

Jon, who taught her to fire a gun in secret when her mother objected; there's a kind of bleak poetic justice in that, she thinks, putting a bullet through the brain of what had once been her mother.

He starts to say something, looking at her across Cat Stark's corpse, but she turns and walks away, quick enough that maybe he won't see the blankness of her expression, won't know that this makes her feel nothing in particular, because she never feels anything now. If he knew that, maybe he wouldn't love her anymore, and then Arya's world would truly end. So she walks away instead, and lets him follow as he will.

“We'll get there,” he says to her that night, in the blackness of someone's abandoned house, huddled together for warmth. “We'll find Uncle Ben, and everything will be alright.” Uncle Ben and his crazy friends, who'd planned for years for just this sort of thing, up in their isolated northern compound. Arya doubts they're still there, to be honest. Sometimes she thinks Jon does too. Still, he makes this promise to her every night, before she falls asleep with her head against his shoulder, and she lets him think it could be true for one more day.

But tonight is different.

“You didn't shoot her.” Her voice is flat, almost accusatory, but she can't help it – Jon's better with guns than she is, and it's not like him to show any reluctance to defend himself.

“No.” He shifts alongside her, the night hiding his face from her. “I – she was your _mother_ , Arya.”

“No, she wasn't. Not anymore.” His fingers are icy under her own; she rolls towards him, tucking his hand under the curve of her waist, feeling the cold flush from his skin travel along her ribs. “Jon, if I get infected-”

“Don't say that,” he interrupts, and she can see now that he's got his eyes closed, as though he can deny her words by blotting out her face.

“- _if_ I get infected,” she repeats, “you can't hesitate. You have to promise me.”

“Arya, please-”

“ _Promise me_ ,” she insists, though she knows already he won't, and he doesn't, stopping her words with his mouth instead, his lips warm against hers, his hands trailing heat now under her shirt.

That she feels _nothing_ anymore, Arya finds, isn't quite true after all. Under Jon's hands, under his lips and tongue, she remembers what it is to feel, what it means to desire, and when he slips inside her, all she can do is gasp and cling to him, try to make her body meld with his the way their thoughts and words used to come together, because she remembers now what it is to love, and to have hope.

“As long as we're together, we'll survive,” he whispers afterward, and she brushes black curls back from his damp forehead, and lets herself believe, just for one night, that he might be right.


End file.
